William the Conqueror his death in 1087.
Then his sons became kings and his great grandson was Henry II the first
Plantagement king of England. The period religion was very important the
Christian church was rich and powerful, and abbeys and monasteries were
important centres of learning 424e41e . Bishops were very powerful and they often
quarrelled with the king.

Literature

The greatest poem in Middle English was
Geoffrey Chaucer who wrote the first original work ever written in the
language. If we want to get a picture of medieval life in Britain we can read
the Prologue of his Canterbury tales. He grew up with the royal family. He
became a diplomatic agent of the crown. Travelling to the continent. In Italy
he became interested in Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio he read Virgil. He died
in 1400 and he was the first poet to be buried in Westminster Abbey. The
Canterbury tales (a general Prologue where the pilgrims are introduced and 24
tales).

Chaucer wanted to give his countrymen a
book that should be a true mirror of England and which they could really
recognize themselves.So, when
he began his masterpiece, he turned for inspiration to the many people he had
met in his life and whose images he had stored in his memory for years. But he
needed a framework inside which to put them, and once more he turned to his
European culture for help. He probably remembered Boccaccio's Decameron, and
borrowed from it the idea of a social event as a pretext for bringing various
people together.

This event was to be typically English,
so he thought that the traditional pilgrimage to Canterbury, which took, place
every year.

PLOT→ He imagined that on
an April day, in the Tabard Inn, at Southwark in London, 29 pilgrims met before
setting out on at pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket at Canterbury.

The pilgrims can be divided into three main groups.

A first group still connected with the declining feudal word (a

Knight, a Squire, a Yeoman, a Pardoner); a second group

associated with religious life
(a Prioress, a Monk , a Nun, a Friar,

a Parson, etc.) a third group including townspeople (a Wife from

Bath, a Merchant, a Student from Oxford,
etc.)

Language Middle
English

The Norman's were French in language and civilisation. For many years
after the conquest all the important positions in church and state were held by
Norman's, so the influence was strong. The ruling classes used Norman French,
while the conquered talked in their native Anglo-Saxon language. They were in
large majority and that's the reason why old English was presented. As a
consequence today it is possible to recognise in the language spoken by the
Norman's it was from the blend of French, Anglo-Saxon and Latin, used by the church,
that Middle English originated.